Voices in the Noise: Crowdsourcing Public Opinion using Urban Pervasive Technologies

The civic potential of pervasive computing remains a relatively unexplored agenda. In our vision of communities and cities enriched with pervasive computing, citizens can leverage and appropriate the new technology and interfaces for their own purposes, and at the same time be empowered to be heard through the use of such technology. Here we report on our progress in creating public human interfaces for interacting with cities. We tackle an important societal issue, civic engagement, and present two longitudinal large-scale experiments for evaluating public interactive crowdsourcing technologies that promote civic engagement. The field trials we report involve public displays, together with mobile phones, Internet technologies, and social networking services to essentially crowdsource public opinion about contextually relevant and topical issues.